Future Perfect
by RavenWriter89
Summary: He rubs his fingers together and can still feel the ashes.


_Written for the LiveJournal Songs for Nine challenge, where each Series 1 episode is paired with a song. I matched the song "Things Don't Always Turn Out That Way" by The Calling with the episode __Bad Wolf_.

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"Rose?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"I'm coming to get you."

He quickly cuts the connection before the sound of hundreds of screaming Daleks can reach his ears. Cowardly, he knows, but if something goes wrong—_stop it—_he would rather have Rose's hopeful smile in his memory than her fear.

Everyone is staring at him like he's just signed her death warrant. "Jack, with me," he calls, stirring him to action. "Where did you say the TARDIS was?"

"Through here, Archive 6," he answers.

He moves towards it, while Jack yells instructions to the others to start evacuating people. He feels relief at the sight of his ship, but doesn't react until he and Jack are inside.

Jack is silent for a moment, already working on his modified gun. Finally he looks up, uncertain. "Doctor?"

He meets Jack's gaze, and answers the unspoken question. "We'll save her. Whatever it takes."

Jack accepts his response and joins him at the console. He's returned to the role of a soldier. "What can I do?"

"Stabilize the extrapolator shielding. We need it to withstand Dalek weaponry. And not just their own weapons, their ships' too."

Jack nods once and sets upon the tangle of wires with the single-minded focus of a predator.

The Doctor starts to dematerialize the TARDIS when the foreboding finally hits. There are many reasons for the Daleks to keep Rose alive, but even more to kill her. Daleks are logical, manipulative, and intelligent. They would know that he would try and rescue Rose; once his course was set, or even when he arrived on their ship, there would be no point in preserving her. She could already be dead for all he knows, and he's walking wilfully into a trap.

He shakes his head to stop that train of thought and returns to guiding the TARDIS back into real space. "We'll let them see us coming," he says unnecessarily. "Try to draw them out and make them think they stand a chance." He grins at Jack and gets a grin in return, but Jack's seen this kind of tenuous war-hope before and can see right through it. "It'll take about fifteen minutes to reach them."

"Good," Jack says. "They'll start to doubt themselves."

He shakes his head. "Daleks don't doubt," he says quietly.

Jack twists the last wire into place, and then there's nothing to do but wait. The Doctor still tweaks a dial or adjusts a lever, but it's really to stop his head shouting at him. He had noticed the denim jacket thrown casually over the railing like it belonged there—_it does_— but barely glanced at it. Now he finds his eyes continually flicking back to it, and the more he tries to stop, the more often it happens.

_Don't think about her being ripped away by the transmat in the TARDIS, don't think about how she reached for you, don't think about her hands, don't think about her hands around you as she tries to teach you to dance, don't think about the look on her face as you spin her around the console, don't think about what she said about dancing, don't wonder if she connects Jack's dancing with your dancing, definitely don't think about dancing with her..._

He rubs his fingers together and can still feel the ashes. He hears her warnings, her scream, and the only thing he can think is, "I've killed her again." How many times has he thought her death a foregone conclusion? Trapped with a Dalek; trapped in Downing Street; trapped by the undead. Trapped with him, by him.

Yet she's always come back. He's been falling into a trap of his own; he's started to believe that her returning was a foregone conclusion. Every time that he saw her safe and whole and oh so alive, he'd beam with pride and wrap her in his arms just to feel her heartbeat against his chest. But he's never said anything. And he starts to wonder if he should.

"What if you couldn't save her?"

Jack has been silent for eleven minutes and 19 seconds when he breaks it by asking the question the Doctor hadn't wanted to answer. He's leaning against the railing, arms crossed and voice carefully flat, not demanding anything. Jack's been learning from Rose; he's beginning to read the Time Lord as well as she does.

He's immediately angry that Jack would doubt him, especially concerning this, then catches up with what he said. Not can't, couldn't. Oddly, he starts to feel something akin to hope. Jack's wording implies that he believes there will be a next time, that while he may doubt his actions, he doesn't doubt them _now._

He straightens and mimics Jack's pose. "I don't know." He very carefully does not look at her jacket and asks, "What would you do?"

Jack actually laughs. "Whatever it takes," he says, repeating the Doctor. "Even if she hated me afterwards."

The Doctor leans over the console again and he realizes his hand is resting over the Emergency Programme sequences. There are dozens of them, hundreds, but one was recorded shortly after the ruins of Downing Street. He can still hear Jackie's voice demanding answers.

"_What if something happens to you, Doctor, and she's left all alone standing on some moon a million light years away - how long do I wait then?"_

It's another question he dreads the answer to.


End file.
